Apple Tree
by Merrom Noire
Summary: Since when has Jack ever cared so much about a corpse, anyway? Jasmine Jolene is just a dead body on a bed. Oneshot, drabble-y. Rated T for references to alcohol and strip clubs.


The dilapidated remains of Eve's Garden have a musty smell of old alcohol about them, as well as a sourness that hints at fermentation. Flickering lights cast flickering shadows across this intoxicating air, causing his vision to waver and his head to throb dully. It's not exactly a place Jack would hang out in, but then again, it's not like he'd been _asked _about whether he wanted to visit a long-abandoned stripper club – come to that, why even visit Rapture in the first place? Best to leave the whole goddamned place twenty thousand leagues under the ocean where it belongs.

The club looks more or less the same as the rest of Fort Frolic, but Eve's Garden has a lot less gloom and a lot more bright pink. Not that this made the place any more cheerful – the neon pink is nothing but a memory, a shade of the bustling activity the room once held. To be honest, it's creepy as hell. Jack gingerly hoists himself onto the stage, where wads of cash lie around stripper poles which the bodies of exotic dancers once graced long ago.

There's a door leading to what is presumably the dressing-rooms and backstage, which Jack walks through, only to be immediately assaulted by an ADAM-induced vision of a 'ghost'.

The apparition is clearly female, a vaguely familiar blonde-and-blue with classically beautiful features: doe-eyes, pouty lips, narrow waist.

"Oh, Mr Ryan," she says with a seductive wink and a low, sultry voice, "I thought you'd forgotten about poor little Jasmine."

Jasmine Jolene. That's why she looks familiar; her face is plastered all over half of Rapture. "Andrew Ryan's Favorite Gal!" the posters advertised. Maybe not, Jack muses to himself, considering the nature of her workplace. How could any favorite of Ryan's ever end up in a place like this?

It isn't really his place to question, though, so he follows the ghost along the narrow corridor. Her legs are long and slender, her hips sashaying gently from side to side, as she leads the unseen ghost of Andrew Ryan to the back room, and the phantom woman walks through the door.

Jack tries it; it's locked. Great, what a waste of time _that_ was. He turns around with a sigh and prepares to make his way out –

– then the shouting starts.

"_I – I'm sorry, Mr Ryan – I didn't know – I didn't know Fontaine had something to do with it!"_

It takes him by surprise for sure, but Jack has little interest in events that transpired years ago. After all, his only goal is to get out of this damn hellhole, so instead he watches the shadows that stretch across the floor, eerie in the red-hued light.

"_Please! I – wha – what are you doing?! Please, I loved you! No!_"

Jasmine Jolene's dying words are like a long, drawn-out crescendo that culminates in a final, desperate yet futile bid for her life, before the red light fades and the only noise left is his quickened breathing.

He opens the door to find a corpse on the bed, and a broken pipe lying by his feet in a long-dried pool of stale blood. There's a pair of shoes nearby that clearly belonged to a man – they could have been Andrew Ryan's, but they could have belonged to anyone else.

Other than that, the room is mostly devoid of anything interesting. Just some stray wine bottles lying around here and there, and an audio diary under the bed, which he plays. He listens to it with half a mind as he sets to work looting everything he can.

The diary is Jasmine Jolene's, and it describes how she'd been pregnant with Ryan's child, but ended up selling the fetus to Tenenbaum for whatever reason. And, well, maybe Jack's not exactly qualified to comment on this, having never met the dead woman and all, but that's just plain _stupid. _If there's one thing Jack understands about the situation, it's that Ryan had been a dictator to make Stalin and Hitler proud. Bit of an irony, really, given the whole Capitalism thing he had going on, but still. Big Brother is watching, all that jazz. Had poor, silly little Jasmine Jolene really thought she could hide a secret like that from Andrew Ryan for long?

Perhaps that's the reason why she's just a dead body on a bed.

Jack finds himself sitting by the edge of the bed, regarding the dead woman. She had definitely been beautiful, but now her blonde hair has faded to nothing, her once-porcelain skin a putrid, leathery mass of rot and decay. Her face in death is but a crude mockery of her beauty in life, forever twisted into a horrified grimace, one arm thrown over her head in a useless attempt at fending off the killing blow.

The portrait on the audio diary shows that she'd had arched eyebrows and a sharp nose. He can almost see the blue of her eyes in the faded black-and-white photograph. And maybe it's just his imagination, but she also had the same high forehead and strong jaw that Jack himself has.

There's nothing more to loot in the room, so Jack gets up to leave. He briefly considers grabbing whatever's on Jasmine's corpse too, but decides against it. Respect for the dead, after all, and –

– and since when has Jack ever cared so much about a corpse, anyway?

Uneasily, Jack shakes the feeling off. He gives the dead woman another look, but he still can't quite bring himself to disturb her rest.

He would have liked to stay a while longer, for reasons he wants to understand himself, but it isn't like Hector Rodriguez is going to kill himself any time soon, and there's no point moping over the dead when the living have a job to do. His first and foremost priority is still to escape Rapture.

With that, Jack quietly leaves the room, with a thousand questions in his head and a heart none the wiser.

* * *

_**Spoiler warning!**_

It's called Apple Tree because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and Jasmine is Jack's mommy, so she's technically the apple tree in that metaphor, geddit? No? 8D It's also somewhat influenced by all those "Come bite the apple!" advertisements, too.

I played Bioshock 1 and 2 about a month ago and I loved them! I need to get Infinite so badly ok my heart cries for this

Anyway, the minute I found out who Jasmine Jolene really was, I freakin' SHAT BRICKS. Seriously, I didn't see that coming. And I felt really bad for looting Mommy's corpse, so I suppose this fic is my apology to her. It's a bit of a drabble, really, but I do hope you enjoyed it nevertheless :D If you could spare a few words, I'd love to hear some feedback! And I hope you have a nice day!


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